Friendly Fire

July 29, 2024
Rousseau recounts how he survived a gunshot wound to the head in this unique and haunting account. In 2017, the author was in his on-campus apartment a month before college graduation, cleaning up a mess left by his roommate and best friend, Mark, when he felt “something” come at him through the wall, leaving him “blindsided, tackled into a pool of cough syrup.” That “something” was a bullet, accidentally fired by Mark from two rooms away. Afraid of the consequences, Mark didn’t call for help immediately, delaying critical care for Rousseau, who suffered a traumatic brain injury and severe PTSD. With punchy, insightful prose, Rousseau details the fallout, including the rift the incident caused between him and Mark, the financial challenges he faced as he tried to pay his medical bills, and the toll it all took on his psyche (“As my body has gotten better, my mind has gotten worse,” he tells his physical therapist). Certain details are infuriating, including Mark’s insurance company employing hack doctors to squash Rousseau’s personal injury claim; others are unsettling, including Rousseau’s assertion that the ordeal turned him into “a rabid brute whose sole intention is to destroy.” The result is a mesmerizing and unforgettable meditation on a stranger-than-fiction tragedy. Agent: Michele Mortimer, Darhansoff & Verrill Literary.

August 15, 2024
Unsettling, episodic memoir exploring a young man's bout with traumatic brain injury. On April 7, 2017, just before graduation, college student Paul Rousseau's life changed dramatically and terribly. In their college room he was accidentally shot in the head by Mark, his best friend and roommate, who possessed way too many guns. The pistol's bullet pierced two walls, ricocheting off Paul's head. What happened afterward is debut author Rousseau's story, written in short spurts as a "buffer" against his traumatic brain injury. Told in sharp, clean prose, with a hard-earned sense of humor, his memoir proceeds in brisk chapters that alternate between those about the accident and aftermath and those about his life, his girlfriend Anna, and his devotion to the Timberwolves basketball team. The bullet drove bone fragments into his brain. In the hospital, facing a craniotomy, he thinks, "I am only just beginning to understand the irreversibility of what happened, the unknown of what's to come." He describes his brain as a "supercomputer disguised as ground beef molded into a fist"; during the operation "the surgeon picks debris out of my head like weeds in a garden." When he's tested after surgery, "I don't know the desired outcome. Is it a pass-fail exercise?" He worries about everything, is confused, stutters, and experiences memory loss and brain headaches; his prefrontal cortex is irreparably damaged. Two months later, he graduates. Rousseau narrates his ensuing navigation of the legal issues that arose over his suit against Mark, who took two precious hours before calling for help; expensive insurance bills; frustrating personal injury litigation forms; and therapy sessions. The author does a fine job discussing his challenges and how he overcame them. "Metaphorically," he writes, "everyone gets shot in the head....It was my challenge, my duty to heal." A powerful, gut-wrenching tale of pain, suffering, and recovery.

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